Quotes by and posts relating to one of the most influential authors of the 20th century, G.K. Chesterton
Sunday, April 20, 2025
"..it uses Spring as a symbol of Easter; not Easter as a symbol of spring."
Christians and all inhabitors of the ancient culture feel that Spring is the symbol of Easter. Materialists, notably all sorts of atheist anthropologists, hold that Easter was only the symbol of Spring. Professors of folk-lore insisted that primitive men (with whom they seemed to be on very intimate terms) had made up a rather unnatural masquerade of myth, merely to cover the natural facts of experience. They concealed the fact that the flowers return, under the parable of a god returning. By the time that commonsense began to pluck up courage to question what were called the Conclusions of Science, it became apparent that there were a good many questions which Science could not answer; and a good many points on which her conclusions were anything but conclusive. Why should anyone want to cover up ordinary facts with an extraordinary story? Why should anybody think he could keep the grass a secret, by the invention of a grass-god? And why could not primitive men be primitive enough to leave plain facts as they were? Was it not much more natural to imagine flowers or foliage as ornaments for a god or hero, than to imagine a hollow idol invented only to stand between men and flowers? Is it not more sane to say that the visible renewal of the earth gives hints or signs to those who already believe in heaven?.......There is nothing but nonsense, therefore, in all pretences that the mere round of Nature itself is the source of our highest hopes; or could by itself have evolved all that is meant by Resurrection. It is the soul that has received an unspeakable secret from heaven, which it can only express in images of the earth; and naturally expresses in terms of the temporary resurrections of the earth. In other words, it uses Spring as a symbol of Easter; not Easter as a symbol of Spring.
March 26, 1932, G.K.'s Weekly
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